Still we get the same old gruel

[venta]

Another recipe request: anyone got any good ideas for interesting vegetarian soup which will also appeal to committed carnivores? Must be something which can be easily prepared in advance and reheated with minimum fuss, possibly more than once.

Your answer must not include lentils :) (I don't have anything against lentils, just two of us are supposed to be making soup so there is a choice, and the other soup-maker is planning lentil and vegetable).

For bonus points, any tips on making good vegetable stock appreciated. I usually make vegetable soup with meat stock of some kind, and when cooking soup for vegetarians I always find the results are just less tasty than I'd hope. Last time I made leek and potato soup it was really quite woefully bland with vegetable stock. I assume this is a resolvable problem which is just me doing it wrong.

Some of the committed carnivores are also the sort of people who are liable to look askance at anything which might be regarded as "a bit funny". So the ideal recipe will avoid outré ingredients like, say, anything which has not been commonly used in Britain since the 1950s. Identifiable ingredients, that is :) What they don't know won't hurt'em.

Comments

Spinach Soup

[uitlander]

Boil up a cubed potato or two in some veggie stock for about 20 minutes (note that some veggie stock cubes are not vegetarian, but some chicken stock cubes are - sigh in exasperation liberally).

Throw in a couple of mushrooms if you fancy them.

Add ~100g of spinach per person and cook for a few minutes (until the spinach looks cooked).

Blitz with a blender/hand blender.

Optionally add some nutmeg to taste.

Re: Spinach Soup

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Sounds nice to me! Am mildly worried that spinach (despite having a long pedigree of UK use) may be "funny" :)

Re: Spinach Soup

[uitlander]

Don't tell them what type of soup it is until they've all told you how delicious it was?

[ebee.livejournal.com]

If u get a good option here please do forward it to me too!

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

French onion is always a goodie - and most people can't tell if it made with beef stock or not. By the time you have loaded it up with cheese, it is "proper" enough to keep most carnivores happy.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I forgot to mention one of the awkward carnivores doesn't eat onions!

(At least he says he doesn't. I maintain he does if I chop'em up small enough that he doesn't notice them! I'm scrupulously careful about people with allergies/serious dietary restrictions, but tend to play fast and loose with people's requirements if I suspect them of being Awkward :)

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

Miso soup with a big dollop of Tofu - and claim it's from the same recipe as Lady Gaga's next dress....

[zotz]

It also works well as onion and leek.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Carrot and honey.

Four carrots to half a leek (or a shallot, or half an onion), a bit of vegetable stock (make it weak to avoid excess saltiness), one teaspoon of honey, and just a soupcon of chilli. It is nice out of all proportion to its simplicity.

(I mash the carrots because I can't be bothered getting the food processor out, but processing the soup when it's done would probably be better)

Sometimes I roast the carrots before I make soup out of them; that's
quite nice. Oh, and a dollop of creme fraiche with it doesn't go amiss.

[ladylizbet.livejournal.com]

OK, my recipie is pretty simple. Feel free to substitute pretty much any veggies on this list for others, it all works.

2 onions
2 carrots
1 bell pepper
1 parsnip
1/4 cabbage
1 leek
1/4 turnip
2 small potatoes
1 can chopped tomatoes
2 veggie bullion cubes
1 can mixed bean salad

Peel and chop veggies. brown them off in the bottom of a deep sauce pan. Add stock made from bullion cubes, and can of tomatoes. (I like to add a glass of wine at this point too)
Allow this to simmer for a while until all the veggies are properly cooked. Drain and add the mixed bean salad. Simmer a while.
Scoop out a cup of soup and keep to one side. Blitz the rest to a liquid, season if req, and pour the cupful back in for texture.

For more texture, you can add some teeny weeny pasta, or broken spaghetti.

Reheats well. keeps for about 5 days. Freezes well. If you add red pesto it works as a pasta sauce.

Feeds about 6 or 8. We make a pot and just keep it on the stove.

Enjoy!

xx

[venta.livejournal.com]

Do I need to worry about there being dressing on the bean salad ? Or is that part of the fun ?

It sounds a bit like my default tomato-and-bean soup plan, only with more vegetables and more blending. Might have to give it a try :)

[ladylizbet.livejournal.com]

It tends to be a variation of the default veggie soup, but it never fails.

The mixed bean salad I buy doesn't have a dressing. It's just a fancy way of saying 'beans in a can' I think. According the the can, it's 'mixed beans, sweetcorn, red pepper & chickpeas in water. Sugar, vinegar & salt added.'
Tesco's own. Really good to bulk it all out and get veggies into unsuspecting males. Will happily live in the cupboard until Armageddon

xx

[ladylizbet.livejournal.com]

I found the recipie for the best tomato soup. I made this a few times last year. It takes ages to prepare but it's SO worth it.

2.3kg fresh tomatoes
24 large basil leaves
170g salted butter
Salt & pepper to taste
85g fromage blanc.

Blanch the tomatoes, skin them and throw away the skin. the flesh goes in one bowl, the seeds in a sieve. Chop the flesh, and add the juice from the sieved/squished seeds.
That's the hard bit over.

Chop most of the basil leaves, chuck into a pan with the tomatoes & the juice. add half of the butter. When the tomatoes breaks up more, add the rest of the butter and continue to cook gently. Season.

Use the fromage blanc & remaining basil leaves to serve.

So yummy. Takes forever to do the tomatoes, but do them the day before and they'll be fine.

xx

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

LENTILS?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[venta.livejournal.com]

I beg your pardon. For someone of your currently nervous disposition, I should have put the word "l*nti*s" behind a cut ;)

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Honestly, one goes for years without seeing a single lentil, and then, suddenly they're everywhere you turn, sneaking up on you, inescapable. It's a conspiracy!

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

We have a mushroom soup recipe at home which I'll dig out for you.

From memory, it's lots of mushrooms, soaked dried mushrooms, presumably some stock and seasoning, boil up, blitz. Add cream before serving if so inclined (we've left it out when feeding lactose intolerant types, and it's still really good without - and is a richer colour, the cream makes it paler of course)

recipe will either be onion free to start with, or trivially adaptable to make it so, since D can't eat onions either.


If you're cooking soups without onions, there's a few options. First, if having a bit of the flavour is acceptable, stick a whole onion in when cooking, and take it out before serving (slice into other guest's portions if they like onion)

if onion has to be avoided entirely, use a couple of sticks of celery and a tiny bit of sugar as a substitute - can either remove the celery or blend it. They add the 'filler' flavour and the sweetness that onions usually supply.

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

I love a Roasted Cherry Tomato and Basil soup (from Delia, I think). It is better with garlic, but if they don't do onions...?

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

Try this, substituting mushroom stock for chicken stock (which is incidentally, *wrong*, the correct stock to use is the water left over from boiling a ham), with a few caraway seeds.

I really like it (although I will confess it's not quite as good as the meaty version).

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Miso could certainly be the basis for your stock, whether you do a nominally "miso soup" or not.

[paste.livejournal.com]

roasted red pepper & sweet potato/butternut squash with garlic & rosemary.
can add regular potatoes & carrots to bulk it up if required.

i had mushroom & red pepper soup the other day, it was amazing, despit the fact that i'm not a massive fan of mushrooms!

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

This soup can be made veggie by using veggie "bacon" and substituting veg stock for the meat.

Also, mushroom and sherry soup:

450g / 1lb mushrooms (original recipe reckons "button", in fact you can use
pretty much anything you like, including a mixture)
1 onion, chopped (very optional if you're me)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
50g / 2oz butter or margarine
50g / 2oz plain flour (or low-carb flour)
300ml / 1/2pt milk (or soy milk; exact quantity isn't too critical)
600ml / 1pt chicken (or vegetable) stock
2 tbsp sherry (again, exact quantity not critical and I usually add more)
salt and pepper
150ml / 1/4pt single cream
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

Thinly slice the mushrooms. In a saucepan, cook the onion and garlic in the butter or margarine until softened. Add the mushrooms and cook gently for a few minutes. Stir in the flour. Gradually blend in the milk and stock. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer gently for 15 min. Stir the soup frequently to ensure a smooth consistency.

Add the sherry and season to taste. Pour into soup bowls. Garnish the soup with a swirl of cream and sprinkle with parsley.

[Notes: (a) exact quantities of liquids are not at all critical and can be adjusted for thickness and number of people you need to serve (though you might want more mushrooms if you're upping them a lot). (b) soup can be left for longer than 15 min -- quite a bit longer. (c) putting about 3/4 of it through the blender before serving gives you a slightly more even texture without quite the level of lumps of mushroom -- which can be handy if you're using mushrooms that taste good but aren't pretty.]

[kauket.livejournal.com]

Nigella does a good sweetcorn chowder - http://beta.nigella.com/recipe/recipe_detail.aspx?rid=151

[eviltwinemma.livejournal.com]

Potato, Parsnip, Celeriac. (1 medium spud and 1 biggish parsnip per person plus 1 medium head celeriac per 3 people) Chop, boil in bouillon or veg stock (enough to cover veg, add a bit more if needed later). Add mushroom ketchup, a bit of cumin, cayenne, coriander and a teeny tiny bit of mace. Boil till parsnips fall apart when you try to pick them up with a fork. Blitz for smooth soup, mash and stir like mad for "rustic" soup. Add torn-up chestnut mushrooms, boil a bit loger and serve.

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

I know bugger all about making soup, but I do find that copious amounts of black pepper works wonders for spicing up blander soups.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

copious amounts of black pepper works wonders for spicing up blander soups
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Noooooooooooooooooo! That is so not the one true way. [grin]

(Of course, I don't know what is - I'd have to ask valkyriekaren or cookwitch or thalinoviel. [grin])

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Last time I made leek and potato soup it was really quite woefully bland with vegetable stock. I assume this is a resolvable problem which is just me doing it wrong.

Blimey - don't think "bland" has ever been a failure mode of my own attempts at leek-and-potato, and I don't usually bother with any stock at all when soup-making. (It seems like double the effort for about 10% benefit, if that.) Are you using too much potato? Or not enough of the green bits of the leeks? It's also one of the few soups I do sometimes put salt in. If you want to give it some real bite, you can save some green bits, chop them very finely, and pop them in towards the end of cook.

Other ideas not mentioned so far:
- carrot and coriander, with optional orange/zest
- parsnip and apple, tart up with Calvados
- minestrone - but nowadays for public serving you have to be careful not to make it look too much like dieter's cabbage soup - perhaps best avoid any brassicas; could job in some pesto to make it interesting
- gazpacho or ajo blanco (I've made the latter to my satisfaction several times, but partner wasn't convinced) - if you put enough raw garlic in these nobody will complain about it being bland
- Scotch broth - to me this means miscellaneous vegetable soup with pearl barley in; could enhance with beer or a tot of Whisky
- courgette, marrow, pumpkin, squash - very seasonal now (at least the latter) but even I find these bland as soup bases so probably not a good choice

As a general principle, putting in plenty of onion, well-softened as the first step, gives a richer soup. If your carnivore guest is no-onion-at-all, rather than prefer-not-onion-but-will-eat-if-disguised, you're in trouble; garlic is probably your best bet. Also, the quality of veg does come through in soup: bland tasteless vegetables are probably more edible as soup than in other forms, but tasty vegetables make much tastier soup, IME.

Gazpacho for the win

[ringbark.livejournal.com]

CBA to dig out a recipe, so go here:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gazpacho
even though Wikipedia isn't a recipe book.
I note that onions are deemed optional, so that should be fine for your onion naysayer.

Also, borscht.

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

If you want to vim up a vegetable stock, I'd go with some:

[bondagewoodelf.livejournal.com]

Look for a recipe for mustard-garlic-cucumber soup!

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. Where are my girlfriends when they're needed?

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

The secret of good vegetable soups is garlic and lard. (Not literal lard, obviously, but something like cream, coconut milk or good olive oil.)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Stilton and broccoli is a good and very simple one (assuming broccoli's not too weird). To serve four, steam a couple of pounds of broccoli (cut up, stalks and florets) until tender. Add two pints of veg stock. Add 4 oz of grated (or chopped) stilton. Add quarter of a pint of double cream, or ricotta or something, if you want to make it (even) richer. Whizz up with a stick blender. Add salt, pepper and maybe paprika to taste. Quantities are slightly guesswork as I make it by eye, so use judgement if they look wrong in practice!

My preferred veg stock by miles is Marigold, which comes from Switzerland but you can get it in Sainsburys. You can get a vegan one, an organic one, and I think a low-salt one, but they're all basically the same.

[condign.livejournal.com]

I have never tried this, but if you're up for experimenting, you might try making beer and cheese soup with this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aecht_Schlenkerla_Rauchbier

It has a very strong bacon flavor, and yet is veggie friendly.